commentBest Green Houses
This New Old House: In rural Wisconsin, a modest building inspired by barns embodies sustainability knowledge of many vintages.
Alchemy
August 2011
Photo © Geoffrey Warner, AIA/Alchemy LLC, 2008
Click the image above to tour this month’s Best Green House.
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Based on what you have seen and read about this project, how would you grade it? Use the stars below to indicate your assessment, five stars being the highest rating.
Based on what you have seen and read about this project, how would you grade it? Use the stars below to indicate your assessment, five stars being the highest rating.
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Don’t judge a barn house by its cover. A quick glance at Alchemy’s 1,850-finished-square-foot house in Blair, Wisconsin, would suggest that the building is only tenuously a structure—certainly not a sustainable design by the St. Paul, Minnesota–based team behind weeHouses. Rough-sawn white oak planks on the facade are widely gapped, and warping makes the shelter appear freshly twisted by wind.
“My intent was to relate to those types of buildings you see in the rural landscape; they’re all square-built but have recessed over time,” says Alchemy founder Geoffrey Warner. Instead of subjecting this house to the hourglass, Warner pulled the top of the southwestern corner slightly more to the south…
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